Whispers from the Deep Woods
At dusk, the deep woods become a memory you can walk through, a cathedral of pine and quiet where sound travels differently. I learned this when I followed the old trail to the place my sister vanished years ago, the one the mapmakers forgot and the elders warned about. The trees seem to lean closer, listening for your heartbeat, and every step is a listening test. The forest does not hurry; it waits, patient as a tide, and when it finally breathes, you hear more than wind.
I carry a faded compass and a photograph in a plastic sleeve—two talismans against a forest that loves to misplace you. The path narrows to a corridor of draped moss, and the air grows damp with the scent of rain stuck in the bark. Voices begin as a murmur behind the bark, a chorus of voices that claim your name and tell you you are late, that the hour is never right for leaving. I tell myself it is only wind, only branches, until the whispers rise into sentences.
“The woods remember every footprint, every whispered wish, every forgotten vow,” a voice says, not mine and not the wind, but something older than both.
The forest exhales—slow, as if the world were taking its pulse. Then the circle appears: a ring of ash-gray mushrooms, a pool that shows not the sky but a pale reflection of faces. The whispers come to me in a chorus of quiet, listing warnings and memories in a language I almost recall from childhood. I realize the forest is not haunted by ghosts; it is haunted by memory itself and by the debts we owe to places that did not forget us.
The Debt of the Forest
- Return what you took in the last winter’s storm.
- Speak the name you refused to say aloud.
- Leave an extra moment of stillness for those who listen.
- Walk away with your pulse measured against the dark—then wait to see what remains.
I do not bargain with the dark, I simply listen. When I finally breathe out the name that has hovered at the edge of the woods, the air thickens and the whispers soften, as if the forest itself is listening to a promise I am only half ready to make. The trees yield a path that glides away to safety, or perhaps deeper into a memory I must keep. The silence afterward is not relief but consequence, and I step forward with a cautious gratitude: the deep woods have spoken, and I have learned to listen without shrinking.